Cunning Con Artist Finally Gets His Comeupance
The case against Monroe Edwards, con artist and fugitive from Lone Star justice, went to a New York jury on June 17, 1842.
The case against Monroe Edwards, con artist and fugitive from Lone Star justice, went to a New York jury on June 17, 1842.
The cunning Kentuckian never earned an honest dollar in his life. Already incorrigible when he came to Texas in 1827 at the age of 19, Edwards made a fast and fabulous fortune smuggling slaves from Cuba. He invested most of his ill-gotten gains in prime real estate, which became the Brazoria County plantation Chenango.
Edwards took on an equally unscrupulous partner named Christopher Dart and remained active in the illicit slave trade right up until the independence insurrection. Although he dodged the dangers of the historic conflict by leaving the province, his cowardly conduct did not keep him from masquerading as a hero of the Texas Revolution.
Deciding to dump Dart, Edwards devised a fiendishly clever way to dissolve their partnership without sharing the proceeds of the joint venture. He chemically erased the text of a letter from his associate and above his signature wrote a phony bill of sale for the patsy’s portion of the plantation.
Dart retaliated with a lawsuit, which was tried at Brazoria in March 1840. The jury found in favor of the plaintiff awarding him substantial damages and freezing the assets of the dismayed defendant.
But that was only the beginning of the con artist’s problems. He was arrested the very next day on a forgery charge and held without bond in Brazoria. Jailbird or not, Edwards was entitled to the special treatment accorded any gentleman. As a result, the sheriff allowed Kitty Clover, a mulatto slave disguised as a manservant, to join her master and lover in his cell.
Granted bail at a habeas corpus hearing in San Antonio, Edwards sent Kitty back to Brazoria to snoop around. She found out that fresh charges had been filed to ensure his pretrial detention and rushed to warn him. The couple quickly fled Texas with all the gold they could carry.
During a brief layover in NewYork, Edwards wrote a number of renowned Americans to obtain their autographs. Employing the same technique used in the failed attempt to cheat his business partner, he transformed polite replies from Daniel Webster, Martin Van Buren and other prominent personalities into glowing letters of introduction.
Edwards then traveled to England, where the counterfeit credentials opened every door. Posing as a saintly abolitionist dedicated to freeing the slaves he had sold into bondage, the charlatan was warmly welcomed by the British elite and even presented to parliament.
The Lone Star minister was not nearly so gullible and dug up the dirt on the flashy fraud. James Hamilton put the impostor on notice in November 1840: “I beg to inform you that I have been apprised that you are a fugitive from the public justice of the Republic of Texas charged with the commission of an infamous crime.”
Threatened with exposure and possible imprisonment, Edwards caught the next boat back to New York. But he had one more trick up his silk sleeve.
With a few expert strokes of the pen, Edwards invented an impressive identity – John P. Caldwell, wealthy Arkansas planter. Putting up a thousand nonexistent bales of cotton as collateral, he applied for a $25,000 loan from a merchant bank in Manhattan. He cashed the check on Aug. 28, 1841 and vanished into thin air.
Edwards and his latest accomplice, Alexander Powell, hid out in Philadelphia waiting for the bamboozled bankers to lose interest in their whereabouts. But the five-figure reward offered for their apprehension only turned up the heat and persuaded the pair to split up.
The plan called for Powell to slip into Boston, where he would book passage for Europe, while Edwards headed south for New Orleans. To divert attention from his own departure by sicking the law on his confederate, Edwards mailed an anonymous tip on the date Powell was supposed to sail.
But the swindler outsmarted himself. Powell’s cruise was delayed three days enabling the police to grab him on the gangplank. He took one look at the unsigned letter responsible for his capture, recognized the handwriting and in a fit of temper unmasked “John P. Caldwell.”
Edwards still would have made a clean getaway if not for an uncharacteristic act of compassion. He stayed overnight in Philadelphia in order to provide for Kitty and their five month old child. Moments after opening an account in her name, he was collared by the cops.
Convicted in the cotton caper, Monroe Edwards was sent up the river to notorious Sing Sing prison. Abandoned by his beloved Kitty, he tried twice to escape. A severe flogging following his second attempt commuted the fugitive Texan’s long prison term to a death sentence in 1847.
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